European power struggles

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July 17, 2012 |
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Can public resistance be overcome?

Call it people power. Or rather, people against power. Ordinary Europeans have become experts in delaying or even stopping the introduction of energy technologies. How can public resistance be overcome?

It’s not the technology, it’s the way you use it

There have been protests all over Europe against wind farms, geothermal facilities and other green initiatives. People are organising, demonstrating, and attempting to elect politicians who promise not to build anything. If that isn’t enough, citizens are using the courts to tie up planners and builders of new energy technologies for years, often with the help of local municipalities or environmental groups. Yet if we want to have energy in the future, we have to build new power generating facilities, if only to replace the old ones. And not too far away from large population centres either, so as not to waste power. How can policymakers, politicians and planners overcome the serious lack of societal acceptance of future energy plans? Transparency is the key, says Stefan Gold, from the Institut de l’entreprise, Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland. He researches stakeholder management in energy production: “Politicians who are planning any kind of energy facilities have to be completely open about their plans. Honesty is the only policy, any kind of deceit or ambiguity will come back to haunt you.”

Blind spot

There’s no doubt public participation complicates things. Indeed, communicating with local communities is a bit of a blind spot for most of our leaders. In a democracy, politicians are chosen by us to make tough decisions. Strictly speaking, they can ignore protests and plan new facilities wherever they like. But involving the general public should be an integral part of the decision making process according to Gold, because it enhances the legitimacy of the choices a government makes.

People have a deep mistrust of planners and politicians who lack transparency

While you are probably not going to come up with a single location for a future wind farm or biomass facility that is acceptable to everyone, with greater citizen involvement, the dilemmas involved can be seen by all; the process is clear. There is no ‘democratic deficit’ in the planning process and hopefully politicians gain a better understanding of the societal impact of the project. “By consulting with those who live near a future site you also get a clear idea of the preferences of the population,” continues Gold. “You can build consensus among a large part of the population and garner support. Of course, there are always going to be people who are against building anything anywhere. And they can be very strident about it.” Nimby? Pimby? Banana?

All over Europe, people have found effective ways to kick planners out of their backyards. Protesters in Wales stopped the building of a biomass power plant in Port Talbot. Tidal power projects were cancelled in Ireland. Fishermen in France torpedoed an offshore wind park comprised of 100 turbines in the Arromanches. There is European-wide resistance against shale gas drilling and carbon storage injection projects [see text boxes] while the European Platform against Wind Power group unites turbine haters across the continent. The Nimby (Not In My Backyard) syndrome is often believed to be the problem. We all want electricity, the theory goes, but we do not want it to be generated anywhere near us. As the list of failed energy projects goes on and on, a new acronym was coined a couple of years ago. Some say we have now advanced to Banana: Build Absolutely Nothing Anytime Near Anyone. Should we give up on a greener future? No, says Maria Pia Misiti, secretary of the Associazione Pimby in Italy. Her organisation – the name is a pun and stands for ‘Please in my back yard’ – tries to get planners, politicians and the general public to engage in dialogue in order that fewer projects fail. “We studied all the cases in which people successfully opposed infrastructure projects and found flaws in the government’s communications every time”, she states. But there were also similarities between the successful projects: local communities almost always gained something. Does she mean you can buy the support of communities? “It is not so much buying as compensating. The country needs a new road or a power plant, but what do the local people need? It could be a park, a local road or a community centre. When you lose something, for instance an uninterrupted view or peace and quiet, it is reasonable you should get something in return.” The Pimby manifesto was signed by politicians, community leaders and those responsible for Italian infrastructure. The next step is to get the central government to sign a law that makes it mandatory for planners to compensate local communities. As a bonus, they have to communicate with people near the site at an early stage. It’s something that Italy needs in order to move into the future, according to Misiti. “Some infrastructural projects in our country are delayed for decades because authorities and communities are battling it out in court. By making it compulsory to negotiate about a project at an early stage, we hope to move forward.”

Top-down decision making

As the Italian example shows, the struggle of local communities is not so much with technology, as with failed processes and rigid top-down decision making. A lot of research on societal sustainability corroborates that. Nimby is an empty concept, scholars say. It is a simplification of a complex interaction between governments and the general population. Some academics believe that acknowledging the Nimby concept actually hinders policymakers and energy companies in achieving public acceptance of energy technology. “The recognition of any Nimby-motivated resistance has become a weapon in the small wars that are fought to influence place-making decisions. It is the ultimate legitimisation for not considering the arguments that are put forward. This practice of disregard of important elements of the issue is counterproductive, though, and it might eventually become one of the major sources of societal resistance”, writes researcher Maarten Wolsink in a ‘critique on the persistence of the language of Nimby’. There are long-term risks, continues Wolsink: “As the opponents as well as their arguments are lumped together and collectively ignored, their acts will rapidly turn into strategic behaviour only, focusing on obstruction, rather than on adjustment and influence. All studies on location conflicts, including those that claim to look at ‘Nimby and beyond’, show that it is not a wise policy strategy to disregard the objections.”

Clean Green

Psychologist Gundula Hübner of the Martin-Luther- University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, studies the acceptance of green technologies and environmental law by the general public. Despite all the resistance against energy technologies, she thinks implementing cleaner technologies could be the answer. Technology is contrarily the solution as well as the problem. “When it comes to public opposition, there is a huge difference whether you want to build a nuclear reactor, a coal firing plant or a wind farm. People have a clear preference for green technologies”, Hübner claims, citing a study of public views on power lines in Germany and England: “We do still have opposition if the lines are for green. However, people are less sceptical. When they assume the lines are used for nuclear power or coal they object to them more strongly.” But what about the protests against wind farms? Doesn’t that prove that even they are not readily accepted? Hübner also points to the examples of communities which volunteer to have wind farms. It is not the turbines as such that people usually have trouble with, but who decides where they will be erected. “Research shows people have a deep mistrust of planners and politicians who lack transparency. They want to be in on the decision making process, not stand on the sidelines and wait for others to decide about their region. Go over people’s heads and they are going to block any decision you make. Use their knowledge and you might be surprised how cooperative people really are.”

Small earthquake

The bad news is that drilling for shale gas is a disruptive – and controversial – procedure. The layers of rock that contain the gas have to be fractured using hydraulics for the gas to escape, a technique called ‘hydraulic fracturing’ or simply ‘fracking’. Basically, that means causing a small earthquake. Water, sand and toxic chemicals are pumped deep underground at a tremendous pressure to break up the layers of shale and release the gas so it can be pumped to the surface. More bad news is that fracking has become a serious environmental and health issue with a moratorium in place in New South Wales (Australia), Karoo basin (South Africa), Quebec (Canada), and some of the states in America.

Frack off

Public protest against fracking is on the rise. Earlier this year, public pressure forced France to become the first nation to officially ban the technique. Internationally, protesters are organizing rapidly and exchanging information through Youtube and websites such as Frack-off.org.uk. The UK recently saw its first ‘Frack Mob’ mass action, where protesters halted work at a drilling site in Hesketh Bank, Lancashire. Protestors question the potential contamination of ground water, earthquakes, risks to air quality, the potential migration to the surface of gases and chemicals involved in the fracking process, the potential mishandling of waste, and the health effects of all of these. On Youtube some Americans claim that shale gas leaking into their drinking supply caused tap water to ignite. None of the counter-arguments from politicians and companies seem to convince the public. Bruno Vigier is the mayor of Les Vans, a town in the French Ardèche that stopped energy companies from drilling. Vigier himself sided with the protesters: “I was angry and shocked that we were not informed about the decision to drill near our town. As soon as we saw the plans, we knew that it was going to cause great damage to the environment. That is contrary to our policy of protecting nature and having clean rivers and lakes for tourists to visit.”

Local Hostility

According to Oxford Institute for Energy Studies researcher Florence Gény, the biggest challenges to full-scale production of shale gas in Europe will be cost and land access. “Land access is a huge issue linked to severe spatial restrictions resulting from high levels of urbanisation in North Western Europe; extensive regulatory protection of sites and landscapes; and difficulties in accessing private land due to local hostility”, she writes. Gény advises the involvement of operators to develop mechanisms that incentivise landowners and integrate stakeholders in decisions impacting local socio-economic and environmental conditions. But perhaps most importantly, if the industry is to develop in Europe, she says there must be: “Better communication on environmental impact and responses to growing public concerns arising from US operations. Environmental issues could be a killer to the nascent industry in Europe, as it could be a serious brake to US shale gas operations. We think the US needs to clear its environmental debate before Europe can fully embrace unconventional gas.”

No sense of urgency

Senior researcher Jurgen Ganzevles of the Rathenau Instituut, a Dutch technology assessment institute, recently painted a grimmer picture of the acceptance of green technologies. In a comprehensive study of future energy systems, Ganzevles states how all energy technologies are controversial, ‘whether new or old, grey or green’. The root of the problem is the lack of a sense of urgency felt by both the public and policymakers, resulting in collectively shared myths about an easy and painless transition to sustainable energy systems – lullabies that send people to sleep. Key to Dutch local resistance, Ganzevles believes, is the non-existence of a firm national political strategy on the future energy mix. He advises Dutch politicians and policymakers to rapidly start educating the general public. People need to realise that painful choices will ultimately have to be made if they want clean, affordable and reliable energy in the future. Good government communication and collective knowledge might well help tackle public resistance in the future.

Keep talking

Hübner believes governments and local populations often communicate on different levels, perhaps even in different languages: “A civil servant is used to working with facts and figures. His boss tells him he wants to generate more wind energy, so he consults a wind map to decide where to build the turbines. If you live near that place, you do not care about wind charts. Your response is based on your emotions. These turbines might produce noise and they are going to spoil your view.” Smart planners use local expertise to find the right location, but whatever happens, keep talking. In the German region of Niedersachsen, a wind developer had to go to court to win permission to build a windfarm. It won; local protesters had to accept that their horizon would include turbines. It would have been very easy for the developer to build on the site and ignore its neighbours. But when the court battle was over, the company went back to the community. A plan was drawn up to have an independent authority measure the noise of the turbines and if they were deemed to be too noisy, the company would take action. Hübner: “I know the measurements are going to be impartial because they asked me and my colleagues to do them.”

CO2 storage
‘Glossy brochures are not the right communication tool’

Saying a planned facility is ‘green’ or ‘safe’ won’t work – at least not in Germany or the Netherlands. ‘There is a great enthusiasm for science. However, when scientific discoveries are transferred into technology, opposition comes forth.’

In September 2011, the Bundesrat, Germany’s parliament, blocked a law allowing the storage of carbon dioxide underground in a bid to reduce emissions. The government must now come up with a revised bill to conform to a directive from the European Union on the technology. One year earlier, the Dutch national government had to announce that a similar test site underneath the residential area of Barendrecht, near Rotterdam, was to be scrapped. “The three year delay to the project and the total lack of support in the locality were the main reasons behind the decision”, economic affairs minister Maxime Verhagen said.

Buying time

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a relatively new technique for permanently storing the greenhouse gas CO2, in order to curb emissions. It is pumped out from fossil-fuel burning plants or from industrial processes, liquefied and then buried underground, usually in disused natural gas storage chambers. It’s a technology that has been used in gas fields under the sea, but not near populated areas. In Europe, many of the pilot projects are being partly funded by the European Union. CCS is seen as a way of buying time for politicians to forge an effective treaty on greenhouse gases and wean the global economy off fossil fuels.

Not in our community

In both the German and Dutch cases, national governments met with fierce opposition. Locals feared gas leakages or the possibility of explosion-like uncontrolled emissions. In the case of Barendrecht, the local community also feared a decrease in property values. In Beeskow, a quiet town in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, local Mayor Frank Steffen said: “A field trial under our community is not acceptable.” Critics believe that the large amount of investment required would be better spent on renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power, or on nuclear power. “In my view, CCS is fundamentally wrong”, said mayor Steffen to newspaper Der Spiegel. “It was invented to keep the old-fashioned way of producing energy from coal alive.” In an interview in newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, Brandenburg’s economy minister, Ralf Christoffers said: “In Germany, there is a great enthusiasm for science. However, when scientific discoveries are transferred into technology, opposition comes forth.” He pointed out that public resistance to CCS goes hand in hand with opposition to building a new power infrastructure for renewable energy – notably wind power. “The focus of our energy policy is the expansion of renewable energies. That is a huge problem, because the resistance is growing. In Brandenburg, we must build nearly 1000 kilometres of new lines for electricity but we need acceptance.” When asked how to achieve acceptance, Christoffers stated: “You need to talk to the people.”

Safe soda?

Indeed in both CCS cases, poor communication seems to be the problem. Carbon dioxide gas is odourless and not in any way dangerous, local communities were told. And even if the gas did somehow escape to the surface, the risk, it was said, would be zero. If it were to creep into the drinking water supply, as some people feared, scientists said it would merely carbonate the water, not unlike a soda. Wrong, says stakeholder management researcher Gold [see main story]. “There should be no absolutes in risk-communication. Never pretend to have all the answers. Admit that it is a relatively new technology and you expect risks. Don’t feign certainty.” The people of both Barendrecht and Beeskow proved Gold right. They started lobby groups and organized fierce protests. Politicians, planners and engineers assured locals that nothing could go wrong, but to no avail. Citizens remained passionately opposed to the plans. Jurgen Ganzevles, senior researcher at the Rathenau Instituut in the Netherlands, believes the Dutch authorities should have painted a much broader picture instead of underlining the safety of the technology. “What they should have done in Barendrecht is demonstrate how important heavy industry is to both the local and national economy. Only then do you explain that a former gas field is a good place for storage. Concerns about safety will be seen in a different light after that.”

Lessons learned

Meanwhile, the European Union has established a Network of CCS demonstration projects, ‘to generate early benefits from a coordinated European action’. In May 2011, the experiences and lessons learned from six full-scale European CCS demonstration projects were shared with the public in Rotterdam. In their online newsletter, the CCS network dryly reports: “Ignoring stakeholders and under-estimating the influence of the local community is likely to cause delays.” It’s a lesson learned, the network writes: “It is generally felt that development of and engagement in dialogue, especially with local stakeholders, is to be preferred above one-sided dissemination of ‘corporate’ project information. This is especially true for those projects who foresee onshore storage of CO2.” The network gives an example of how not to communicate with local people. In 2009, Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company involved in CCS, announced CO2 storage plans using its ‘standard’ communication format. But it became clear that “glossy brochures are not the right communication tool in order to get local people to trust the company.”

Dread factor

In the 59-page Thematic Report on Public Engagement, the CCS network concludes that an important purpose of public engagement is the ‘challenging’ task of communicating and educating the public about the risks related to CCS: “Whereas analysts and risk experts tend to employ quantitative risk assessments to methodically evaluate hazards, the majority of citizens rely on intuitive risk judgments, called ‘risk perceptions’. The public may regard CCS projects as a new technology and not necessarily trust experts’ claims that it’s safe. Furthermore, the distribution of risks and benefits are bound to be perceived as uneven (since some people must be the ones living closest to a storage site). The hazard of a leak is difficult to observe for ordinary people. Also risks may be amplified through social mechanisms, according to the report, “thus contributing to the dread factor.”

Read more?
Public Engagement: Lessons Learned in 2010 – A Report from the European CCS Demonstration Project Networkwww.ccsnetwork.eu

Dancing Ladies

Listening to local people is what Andy Clements does very well. But then again, the chairman of Gigha Renewable Energy has no other choice. As is usual on small Scottish islands, Clements has more than one job. He is the local fire chief, the head of island maintenance and a farmer. But most importantly, he runs three wind turbines on the island of Gigha (pronounced Gee-ya). This gorgeous speck in the Mull of Kintyre (of Paul McCartney fame) is energy self-sufficient thanks to the wind, with the electricity surplus sold to the mainland. Was there opposition before the turbines were built?

It’s the communication,

stupid!

Communication

Communicating with locals and the general public is a key factor to public acceptance. It is a two-way process, so do not just send your message, but listen first.

Forget about Nimby

The Nimby label often turns into a depreciative disqualification of public protest. It can be perceived as an attempt to qualify opponents beforehand, in terms of ‘others’, or at least ‘the other side’. This leads to conflicts.

Paint the whole picture

Explain your policy of making the energy supply more sustainable, and explain why the biogas plant you want to build is a crucial part of that plan.

Show and tell

Explain to the general public what choices have to be made, why, and how you make them. Do not withhold information. It will come back to haunt you.

Use local knowledge

People who know an area can help you choose the right location for a new power station.

Let the locals benefit

Supply local communities near a wind farm or geothermal power station with cheaper electricity or other benefits.

Listen

Never. Stop. Listening. Even after you build a (green) power station, keep lines of communication open.

You might be surprised how co-operative people really are

A lot of discussion, says Clements. But what clinched it for locals was managing the project as a community. He recently visited a remote part of Norway where local tensions were running high. Why? “Because all of the turbines and biogas installations were privately owned. So people were irritated by the sounds and smells of other people’s businesses. I gave them one piece of advice: solve your energy needs together. Don’t build five small turbines, build one big one.” The ‘dancing ladies’ as locals call the Gigha turbines, have saved the island and Clements believes it’s a model that could work in many places. “You can see a wind park on the mainland from here. It is owned by a big electricity company. The people who live next to it are not happy. We love our turbines; they pump new life into our community. Even the guy who lives right next to them is comfortable with them, because otherwise our existence here would be a lot harder. It’s not the technology that makes the difference, it’s the way you use it.”

Invalid Theory Impedes our Understanding: a Critique on the Persistence of the Language of NIMBY. Maarten Wolsink,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2006)

The Relative Importance of Social and Institutional Conditions in the Planning of Wind Power Projects. Susanne
Agterbosch, Ree M. Meertens, Walter J.V. Vermeulen (2007)

Accept, consider, reject?

How do we form opinions on issues like energy and technology? What information influences us in shaping our views? Volta takes a look.

Context matters You are confronted with a new technology you know next to nothing about. Do you already have an opinion about it? You might, according to research by Eindhoven University in the Netherlands. Researcher Wouter van den Hoogen found that people base their positive or negative emotions about a new technology on the context in which they are exposed to it. “If another energy source was casually mentioned just before the assessment of biomass, then their opinion about the use of biomass was assimilated to the use of the other energy source”, writes AlphaGalileo about the research.

Wind farms? Mais Oui!
France is planning to substantially increase the amount of electricity generated through wind power by 2020. But this government-sponsored programme could be seriously delayed if the acceptance of wind turbines is low. So a study was conducted in four coastal regions of France where multiple wind farms are already operating. It shows there is high acceptance of wind turbines among those who live near them. Not only do the respondents at the four sites have a positive perception of wind energy in general, but they also look proprietarily at ‘their’ wind farm. Only five percent of those whose home is near a wind farm believe that turbines are a bad idea.

People like renewable energy (or say they do). So why the protests when a renewable power station is planned near their home? According to this report, the acceptance of new energy technologies at the local and regional level is first and foremost shaped by non-technological aspects. History plays an important role. Have other projects in the region contributed to a general opinion that green energy is a good thing? Then people are a lot keener to support new local projects, the authors suggest: “Positive experiences gained at individual sites can expand to a broader regional level or even influence national policies”.

Compensation is a favourite government strategy to overcome low acceptance for large energy infrastructure projects. Governments use it as a cure-all when confronted with resistance from local populations but confidence in compensation is excessive and the costs associated with it sometime prohibitive. A better way would be to stimulate dialogue, this study concludes.

The Bureau for Technology Assessment of the German Parliament (TAB) has been measuring technology acceptance opinions since 1997. Although Germans have a positive attitude toward technology and technological advances, it is also ambivalent: when questioned about the impact of technological progress, a significant number of respondents selected a negative or undecided option. While the acceptance of green technologies remains high, the acceptance of technologies that are perceived as dangerous, like nuclear energy, has dropped dramatically.

Selfish? Or the expression of a desire for a better environment and quality of life? This paper urges a rethink of the Nimby (not in my back yard) syndrome. “Generalized distrust [has] hidden deeper reasons from view”, the authors write. Nimby syndrome could be a way to bring hidden conflicts in society out in the open and “help translate perceptions and intentions and build partnerships between various civil society members and between them and government bodies.”

The Nimby Syndrome and the Health of Communities Canadian Journal of Urban Research,
Senecal et al, 2006

Energy choices for Europe. Who decides?

Big-tech and Small-tech are two ‘essentially different’ development pathways for the European energy sector, according to this report commissioned by the European Parliament. We can opt for a scenario in which new gas and coal firing power plants are built with CCS technology to curb emissions. Or we can decentralise power generation to smaller wind farms, bio mass facilities and other green technologies and concentrate on energy saving. In the first case we end up using more energy and polluting the landscape in a few places, in the second we use less energy, but have more turbines and other structures on our horizons. Or can we have both?

volTA magazine

volTA was a magazine on Science, Technology and Society in Europe, initiative of fifteen technology assessment organisations that worked together in the European PACITA project aimed at increasing the capacity and enhancing the institutional foundation for knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation. It was published between 2011 and 2015 in 8 numbers.